Southern Yamphu identity Summary

6.3.5 Southern Yamphu identity

Hanβon 1991 first used the term “Southern Lohorung” to describe the group of people living south and east in Dhankuta district of the Lohorung and Yamphu speakers. When we traveled to this area of Dhankuta we were quite surprised to find that none of the people living there referred to themselves as “Lohorung.” Rather, they all called themselves “Yamphu.” Interestingly, quite a few people who call themselves “Yamphu” have clan names that are historically Lohorung clan names. A study of the history of migration and intermarriage patterns needs to be conducted to better understand the factors that have led to the present-day language and ethnic identity of the people who speak Southern Yamphu. We spoke with one leader of the Yamphu Kirat Samaj in Rajarani who told us that migration history varies by family. Some of the families in Rajarani migrated four generations ago from Sankhuwasabha, while others migrated as far back as ten generations ago. In our conversations with leaders it was unclear from where exactly the migration occurred. It is quite probable that there was a mixing through marriage and migration of the people from northern Sankhuwasabha who speak Yamphu with those who speak Lohorung. We hypothesize that this migration and intermarriage is in part responsible for the interesting relationships between identity and language among the Southern Yamphu. Based on our research, speakers in Dhankuta and Devitar do not necessarily view their language as separate from the Yamphu in Sankhuwasabha. They identify quite closely with the Yamphu in northern Sankhuwasabha, though they do acknowledge that their language is somewhat different. The term “Southern Yamphu” has been applied to linguistically distinguish their language from the Yamphu in northern Sankhuwasabha. They do not, however, use this label for their language.

6.3.6 Summary

The lexical similarity between Southern Yamphu Rajarani and Lohorung Pangma is rather low 66 and the average score on the RTT was also low 61. Fifty percent of respondents reported that they understood half or less than half of the Pangma story. Additionally, speakers of Southern Yamphu in Rajarani identify more strongly with Yamphu speakers than with Lohorung speakers, even though they recognize that the languages are related. We conclude, based on these factors, that these two language varieties are distinct enough to require separate literature to meet their language development needs. 7 Yamphu dialect variation and attitudes We gathered data in the same Yamphu-speaking areas in Sankhuwasabha district mentioned previously: Hedangna, Seduwa, Khoktak Num VDC, ward 3, and Num village Num VDC. This chapter will propose dialect groupings within Yamphu in order to clarify variation within the Yamphu language. Our proposal is that the language in Seduwa represents a different Yamphu dialect than the language spoken in Hedangna, Num village, and Khoktak. Two sociolinguistic tools that help define dialect boundaries are lexical similarity comparison and testing levels of intelligibility. In addition to these two methods, we have data from previous research, language attitudes, and the dialect mapping participatory method tool.

7.1 Lexical similarity results